A study of the political, religious and mental worlds of the Catholic aristocracy from 1550 to 1640,

After the Reformation, England's Catholics were marginalised and excluded from using printed media for propagandist ends. Instead, they turned to oral media, such as ballads and stories, to plead their case and maintain contact with their community. Building on the growing interest in Catholic literature which has developed in early modern studies, Alison Shell examines the relationship between Catholicism and oral culture from the mid-sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. In order to recover the textual traces of this minority culture, she expands canonical boundaries, looking at anecdotes, spells and popular verse alongside more conventionally literary material. In her archival research she uncovers many important manuscript sources. This book is an important contribution to the rediscovery of the writings and culture of the Catholic community and will be of great interest to scholars of early modern literature, history and theology.

Catholic Social Networks in Early Modern England: Kinship, Gender, and Coexistence explores the lived experience of Catholic women and men in the post-Reformation century. Set against the background of the gendered dynamics of English society, this book demonstrates that English Catholics were potent forces in the shaping of English culture, religious policy, and the emerging nation-state. Drawing on kinship and social relationships rooted in the medieval period, post-Reformation English Catholic women and men used kinship, social networks, gendered strategies, political actions, and cultural activities like architecture and gardening to remain connected to patrons and to ensure the survival of their families through a period of deep social and religious change. This book contributes to recent scholarship on religious persecution and coexistence in post-Reformation Europe by demonstrating how English Catholics shaped state policy and enforcement of religious minorities and helped to define the character of early models of citizenship formation.

Marotti analyzes some of the rhetorical and imaginative means by which the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority defined themselves and their religious and political antagonists in early modern England.

Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and Counter-Reformation is an interdisciplinary collection that brings together leading scholars in the field to demonstrate the significance of early modern English Catholicism as a contributor to national and European Counter-Reformation culture.

Publisher description: Arthur F. Marotti analyzes some of the rhetorical and imaginative means by which the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority defined themselves and their religious and political antagonists in early modern England. Marotti focuses on the period between the arrival of the first Jesuit missionaries in England in 1580 and the climax of ongoing religious conflict in the Restoration-era "Popish Plot" and the 1688 "Glorious Revolution." He covers such issues as the relationship of print culture to the residual Catholic culture in Elizabethan England; recusant women, Jesuits, and the cultural "othering" of Catholics; martyrdom accounts; polemically charged Catholic and Protestant narratives of conversion; and the depiction of Catholic plots or outrages and providential Protestant deliverances.

Examines the experiences of Catholics during the period when England was ruled by Puritan Protestants.